Year of Sheep Twilight Parade lands on Sydney street

Chinese New Year Twilight Parade has been held in Sydney George Street on Sunday, featuring more than 3,000 national and international performers, building projections and 35 floats, as a part of the City of Sydney's Chinese New Year celebration.

Marking the Year of the Sheep, the parade celebrated the sheep' s characteristics and depicted its life from children's nursery rhymes to the backbone of Australia's farming success.

A giant five-meter tall merino, shepherds, shearers and knitting grannies as well as floats from Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai communities made this year's parade one of the biggest and most impressive on record.

Starting at Town Hall, performers and floats weave their way down George Street and through Chinatown before finishing at Cockle Bay with a spectacular fireworks display to scare off the previous year's bad luck and mark the beginning of the Year of the Sheep. More than 100 participants from Sichuan, Shaanxi and Beijing in China also performed during the parade.

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Ma Zhaoxu and Sydney Mayor Clover Moore exchanged New Year gifts before the ceremony and attended the celebration together along with Chinese Consul- General in Sydney Li Huaxin and other Australian officials.

"The Twilight Parade is an excellent way we celebrate Sydney's cultural diversity, with local and international communities that observe the Lunar New Year taking part," the Mayor Clover Moore said on the ceremony.

Chinese New Year Festival Creative Director Gill Minervini said the Twilight Parade is one of the most loved events of Sydney's Chinese New Year Festival and "as we welcome in the Year of the Sheep, we will also be celebrating its fundamental part in Australia's growth as a nation and the strong ties to the Chinese community."